


After Life

by MaryPSue



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, abuse of the flashback as a literary trope, arguably canonical past character death, really just a whole bucket of wangsty headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: “You - you can’t exist after death, Morty. It’s just - just superstitious bullshit people buy into because it makes them feel better about knowing everybody they love’s eventually gonna bite it. So there’s no such thing as - as - as ghosts. Hand me that socket wrench.”





	After Life

“Uh, R-Rick? Can - can I ask you something?”

The kid’s got a voice like the sonic equivalent of cowering. Like a crouching dog, belly on the floor and tail between its legs. And he doesn’t wait for an answer, pushing forward even though he’s gotta know he’s interrupting. “It’s just, I’ve been hearing these - these weird noises and, y'know, finding stuff in places I didn’t leave it and - and - and we just stuck our bodies - I mean, this dimension’s us,  _their_  bodies - in a - in a hole in the backyard, and, I dunno, I thought maybe if vampires are real then maybe - maybe so are ghosts?”

…

_(No matter how many times he sees it, it never stops being surprising how little time it takes for an entire life to just end. For an entire, infinite multiverse of possibilities to snuff out. A whole shared lifetime of dreams, plans, opportunities, losses, griefs and joys, celebrations and sorrows -_

_\- wiped out in less time than it takes to blink.)_

…

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Y-yeah, but what if -”

“Look, M _uuuuhh_ orty, what - what you think of as yourself is just a bunch of chemicals sloshing around in that lump of noodly fat you call a brain. Just chemicals, Morty. You’re just - just chemical soup. Just - electrified - chemical soup. Take that away and you’re  _nothing_ , Morty. You’re dead like those poor bastards in the backyard, Morty. The - the - the bit you wanna call ‘yourself’ doesn’t exist without the chemicals, Morty.”

“Awh, jeez, Rick, you don’t - you don’t have to make it all personal.”

…

_(He’s old enough to understand what_   _she’s done. Precocious, just a little too smart for a child. He knows, when he finds her stiff and cold and strangely waxy in the tub, the water cooled long ago, a handful of pills scattered across the tiles._

_What he’s not old enough to understand is why.)_

…

“You - you can’t exist after death, Morty. It’s just - just superstitious bullshit people buy into because it makes them feel better about knowing everybody they love’s eventually gonna bite it. So there’s no such thing as - as - as ghosts. Hand me that socket wrench.”

…

_(He’s never known just what, exactly, happened. Just that one day he plugged the coordinates for home into his portal gun and - nothing. No matter what he does, he can’t find it. Finally has to admit it isn’t there._

_The whole dimension. Wiped off the map without a trace._

_Taking everyone within it along with it.)_

…

“W-w-w-well, what about that - Project Phoenix - thing, huh?”

“What about it.”

“You - you had to move your entire consciousness into another body, Rick! You couldn’t have done something like that if you didn’t believe, somewhere deep down -”

“Yeah, I’m bored of this conversation now. Either hand me the socket wrench or go back inside and whack off to Japanese cartoons or whatever.”

“It’s - it’s - it’s  _called_  anime, Rick.”

…

_(Beth would be maybe seven or eight, and doesn’t understand why they’re flushing Mr. Goldie down the toilet._

_“Is he going to make friends down there?” she asks, peering suspiciously down into the porcelain bowl._

_“Oh yeah, lots of great friends. Sewer rats, bacteria, maybe maggots if he’s lucky -"_

_Beth’s got the piercing gaze of all toddlers, the one hardened interrogators would kill to have in their arsenal, the one that doesn’t know it’s rude to stare and wouldn’t care even if it did._

_"Okay, fine. No, Mr. Goldie is not going to make friends, because he’s dead.” Beth’s stare doesn’t waver. “That means he’s gone. Departed. Shu_ uuhhh _ffled right off the mortal coil. You might as well be holding a - a - a toy fish right now, except it probably wouldn’t decay so fast.”_

_Beth looks down at the sad soggy lump of tissue in her pudgy hand._

_“But he’ll come back, right?”_

_“Nnnnope. Mr. Goldie is officially an ex-fish.”_

_There’s a frown creasing Beth’s tiny toddler face. “Then what’s the point?”_

_“You tell me, kiddo. You tell me.”_

_Beth studies the fish corpse for a moment longer._

_“Daddy?”_

_“Yeah, sweetie?”_

_“If Mr. Goldie’s dead, can we give him a Viking funeral?”)_

…

_(The night he’d discovered he couldn’t go home, he’d gotten blackout drunk and lit a docked Federation ship on fire. Set it adrift in the vast sea of space. It'd gone out almost instantly, suffocated by the vacuum, but it was the principle of the thing._

_If he’d known any songs appropriate for a Viking funeral, he might’ve sung them.)_

…

_(His first memory is of a smile, warm and kind and slightly strained. It’s all that’s left of her now. A scrap of smile, and a familiar voice, a voice that sang lullabies and soothed._

_And the last thing she’d ever said to him._

_She loved him. But it was all empty underneath.)_

…

Morty slams the door behind him, and it’s finally quiet. For now.

_Ghosts_. 

What a fucking joke.


End file.
